Unions threw their weight behind Ed Miliband, left, in 2010. Their influence this time around will depend on three factors, Guardian analysis suggest.
Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

Chuka Umunna backs Liz Kendall for Labour leadership

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Labour’s new system for electing its leader in which each vote is equally weighted could still see union members having a decisive influence on the outcome, a Guardian analysis has revealed.

For the first time in the party’s history, the ballot is being conducted under the one-member-one-vote system. In 2010, by contrast, the votes of union members were guaranteed one-third of the electoral college that gave Ed Miliband victory over his brother David.

However, if the votes cast in that bruising contest are recalculated using the new system, removing the union weighting, Ed Miliband would still have defeated his brother David on the final ballot by 175,400 to 147,100.

The degree of the unions’ influence this time around will depend on three factors: the number of levy payers recruited as party supporters before the August deadline; whether the leaderships of the three main unions back the same candidate (as they did in 2010 with Ed Miliband); and whether those recommendations are as influential as they were in the 2010 race.

About 220,000 party members are currently entitled to vote, but this number will be topped up by registered supporters who pay £3 before the 12 August deadline, plus any of the approximately 2.5 million union members who agree to register free of charge.

In 2010’s final round, Ed Miliband won 119,405 individual votes in the union section, and David Miliband 80,266. In the party membership section, David, by contrast, beat his brother by 66,814 to to 55,992. The breadth of David’s support was striking since he topped the poll in every region of the party and in 540 constituencies. His brother topped the poll in just 73.

The numbers game

But it was the scale of the support for Ed Miliband in the union section that consigned David to defeat in 2010, and this would still be the case even if the election was rerun under the 2015 rules.

It was reported at the weekend that unions are recruiting 1,000 members a day as party supporters. If this rate continues each working day until 12 August, they will have recruited only 60,000 members, roughly a third of the union members who voted in 2010. They may well be hoping to push this number higher – perhaps closer to the 200,000 valid union votes cast in 2010. Unite has already commissioned an external firm to call levy payers in order to boost this number.

In 2010, 2.7m votes were distributed to Labour’s affiliated members, but turnout was 9%, or around 250,000. The low figure did not matter in 2010 since the unions were guaranteed a third of the vote in the electoral college, something that does not apply this time.

The second critical factor is the decision of union leaderships on the party candidate to recommend to its membership. The 2010 election showed that the recommendation of union executives was highly influential on how members decided to vote.

In 2010, the three big unions, GMB, Unite and Unison, represented three quarters of the union vote and all recommended Ed Miliband. In these three unions, Ed Miliband won an average of 45% of the first preference votes. A total of 196,750 first preference votes were cast by union members in all the unions that nominated a candidate, and 82,938 went for Ed Miliband.

It is likely that Unite will back Andy Burnham. Photograph: REX Shutterstock

It is likely that Unite will recommend Andy Burnham for leader, but the decision is not a foregone conclusion. Unite has an executive committee meeting starting on 8 June. Many leftwing activists are not enthused by any of the choices, but at the same time see the failure of the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition in the 2015 election as a sign of the futility of forming a splinter party on the left.

The final factor is the degree to which unions can make their recommendation persuasive as they did in 2010. In that election, some of the importance of the recommendation flowed from the extent to which candidates not recommended by a union leadership found themselves “frozen out of a union” either by being excluded from union literature such as magazines, or by discovering the actual ballot paper was enclosed in an envelope making a recommendation for Ed Miliband.

Harriet Harman, the interim leader, has promised to curtail these practices by ensuring the ballot paper is sent out by Electoral Reform Services. A new code states candidates will receive lists of all voters and the secretaries of constituency parties and affiliates on payment of £2,500, “subject to guidance on data protection and limitations on the number of contacts”. But it is still permissible, quite reasonably, for an executive to send out its literature in favour of their chosen candidate.

The war of perception

There is also a potential downside to being perceived as the union’s favoured candidate. Some members with long memories are still bruised by the fact they felt deprived of their true choice by the unions in 2010 and, if they feel Burnham is the creature of the unions, there will be a kick-back.

Party members also above all want a winner and, if Burnham is being branded by the rightwing press as the unions’ poodle, they may think Burnham is hobbled, but if he performs strongly in the planned televised debates, that drag anchor will count for little. Burnham has taken the trouble of announcing he will not accept union cash in his campaign, although his rivals ask if this self-denying ordinance extends to unions working for him pro-bono.

Liz Kendall, by contrast, is getting pretty favourable coverage, but she is taking a gamble that the party membership will embrace her undiluted change message. Her calculation may be that the experience of 1994 and 2010 shows the membership are more mainstream than some imagine. But Blair in 1994 and David Miliband in 2010 were the stand-out experienced candidates and Kendall is being asked to play in a bigger league than she has ever previously operated.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, should not be underestimated. Some of her opening statements have bordered on the bland and her slow start may reflect that her family is still recovering from her husband’s bruising defeat in the general election.

She is now starting to speed up and has some of the best party organisers working in her team. She has the ability, given the electoral system, to emerge as the compromise centrist candidate. So long as she comes second in the ballot, she can hope votes of the third-placed candidate transfer to her, and she can win.